November 1 '07: In California, an overdue fault line triggered a 5.6-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday October 30 in the San Francisco Bay Area, causing many residents to check their earthquake preparedness status, Bloomberg news reported. Scientists said the small temblor signaled a imminent larger seismic shift although they could not say when that shift would happen.

"The Hayward Fault, which runs under heavily populated Richmond, Oakland and Berkeley, is due," Bloomberg reported. "The fault has shifted about every 140 years, seismologists said. Its last big quake, 139 years ago, was estimated at magnitude 7, leveled buildings and killed 30 people."

Residents of the Bay Area told the news service they were worried about their personal and community preparedness levels. "Even seasoned earthquake survivors were startled by the bluntness of the warning from the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council, a panel of scientists that advises Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Office of Emergency Services."

One Seamus Giffen told Bloomberg, "It was Katrina that gave me the idea of a disaster where somebody wouldn't be able to bail me out. ... It made me want to be a little more self-reliant."

If the fault were to shift causing a magnitude 7 quake, "You would have buildings literally torn in half, roads and freeways that would be offset, railways that cross the fault would likely be damaged and impassable," Steve Walter, a seismologist for the U.S. Geographical Survey said.